Tag Archives: Stratford Caldecott

David Russell Mosley

Ordinary Time
7 October 2015
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

Today I was reading Not as the World Gives, the final book of the late Stratford Caldecott. Stratford has been a significant influence on my thought and theology in the last few years and I still mourn the fact that I never met him on this side of the veil. His last book is a treatment of justice or Catholic Social Teaching as broadly construed. In the chapter I was reading today, “Evangelization of Culture,” Caldecott is going through the changes necessary to present culture to bring more in line with a Christian understanding of culture and society. At the end of the chapter, Caldecott relates the importance of the family and of other religions, under the umbrella of family toward this end of the evangelization of the culture.

Caldecott writes, “The basis of the family is self-giving love; it is relationality. Members of a family are constitutively related to each other to such a degree that we commonly say “blood is thicker than water” and accept the necessity of living together despite the most enormous divergences of attitude, personality, and belief.” His point is that even as broken and degraded as the family is today, we still understand it as a place of acceptance and toleration, if not always a place where one’s beliefs or actions are condoned. He suggests that the family might suggest a way forward for ecumenism, not just inter-Christian ecumenism, but interfaith. After all, it is in the family that we learn to encounter the other with respect and dialogue. He concludes:

It we were to build our relations with other religious traditions and communities on the analogy of the family, and work for collaboration and friendship primarily through civil society, rather than through political negotiation (which reduces even theology to politics), we would also create the optimum conditions for truth to reveal itself to all, since the truth is ultimately a “person” rather than an idea, and comes to us through persons, in the radiance and fragrance of those who share our life, those we can love (155).

What Caldecott reminds us of both here and earlier in the chapter is that it is not as simple to say that Christianity is the only true religion and all others are totally false. He writes:

It is not easy, as I have argued elsewhere, simply to assert the truth of Christianity and the utter falsity of every other tradition, since each tradition is a tapestry rich in elements of goodness, beauty, and truth. I believe that wherever Christianity flatly contradicts another faith, it is Christianity that will turn out to be true––or truer––but I also believe that such moments of flat contradiction are fewer and harder to find than at first appearances, once the complexity of religious language and the difference of cultural context are taken fully into account (153).

What Caldecott says here reminds me of two separate but related things. The first is C. S. Lewis. In order to convert to Christianity, Lewis had to be brought to the understanding that the myths he loved but believed to be nothing better than lies breathed through silver were not lies but truth. They were not the whole truth, but there was truth in them, truth is what they sought to communicate. Christianity then is the True myth, the myth, and the truth, from which all other myths derive whatever truthfulness they have. This would lead Lewis to suggest that it is the Christians who get to truly retain the truth of these myths, as well as of other religions, since it is only through Christianity that their truth can be fully understood.

The second thing Caldecott, and now Lewis, remind me of is a conversation I had with a repairman who had come to fix our oven when we lived in England. As most conversations do, this one began somewhere and found its way to the “What do you do?” question. I had no need to ask him, since it was apparent by his presence in my house. But he duly asked the necessary question and I responded that I was a PhD student studying theology at the University. This led us to his marriage and the baptism of his child. He and his wife had had several conversations with the vicar of their parish church and he confided in her that he was uncertain about what he believed. He had, as the story often goes, been to church as a boy but had stopped going and now wasn’t sure of religion, though he had a pretty significant feeling that there was a God. The vicar suggested to him that all the world religions make up a mountain range which we can only see the back of. This led him to the understanding that all the world religions are essentially the same and so we must just pick the one that best suits us. Not even Caldecott would go this far. For the Christian Christ is at the center of all things. If no other point divides us from other religions then at least this one does (and I think others do as well).

I suggested to him, therefore, that a better way to understand Christianity in the light of other religions is this. Of course there is truth in other religions. There must be. All humans, according to the Bible, are made in the image and likeness of God. This means that to some extent we must participate in God, who is the source of all being. If we didn’t we wouldn’t exist. Even in our fallen state this is not totally lost to us. If it were, we would cease to exist. This means that as humans seek to understand their desire to worship, and as we create systems of worship, they will to greater and lesser adhere to truth, beauty, and goodness. I did not get into Aquinas’s controvertiblity of being, but I touched its edges as I tried to describe to him that other religions will always have aspects of the truth. However, I tried to emphasize that for there to be aspects of the truth in other religions, there must be a standard by which this is judged. This standard, as Caldecott says, is a person, Christ, the Son of God, second person of the Trinity, who is himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

I will likely never know what the outcome of that conversation will be. All I can do is pray I did something good and commit this man to God. But the greater point to be drawn here, as Caldecott does, is this nature of truth sharing between Christianity and other religions means that we have allies in the fight against secularism. Of course we want also to convert our Muslim brethren as we do our atheist, but we must not forget that the we can fight beside the Muslim and not just against him (as we must do on certain points of theological and salvific importance). We can pray for our cooperators conversion as we fight together to evangelize the culture. And we can do this because Christ, who is Truth, is at work in what is true in Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism etc.

Stratford Caldecott, a man I never had the pleasure of meeting in this life, has had a profound effect on my life, devotion, theology, understanding of education, and more. This excellent post on his final book, Not as the World Gives, written by someone who knew him personally, is a source of both joy and sadness for me. I can only join the ranks of those who mourn, as Stratford himself understood them, Blessed are they that mourn: “that is, those who remember the dead, and who remain faithful to tradition” (Not as the World Gives, 13).

Read this, and be moved, read more Stratford Caldecott, and let him move you to greater devotion for our Holy Lord.

Hilaire Belloc calls the dons that taught him at Oxford «The horizon of my memories— / Like large and comfortable trees.» I can apply that expression to the friends of my parents whom I knew as a small child. Since we moved often when I was growing up, there are many who form the horizon of my childhood memories whom I have seen only rarely since. There is something wonderful about meeting those people now (or even just reading their writings), and being able to know them in quite a different way than I did as a child.

David Russell Mosley

Epiphanytide
Candlemas
2 February 2015
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

Well, we’re experiencing yet another snow storm here in New England, and while not a blizzard this time it is still keeping me and my family inside. Snow and ice are beautiful but perilous. I think it no coincidence that we tend to associate snow with Faërie. But more on that another day.

I wanted to write to you about what I’m reading right now. It’s a new theme I’ll be coming back to from time to time as the books I’m reading change. The hope is to interest you to read new, or old, books that you haven’t read, or haven’t read in a long while. Also, it should hopefully help me engage more fully with the books I’m reading by writing about them from time to time as I read them.

All Things Made New by Stratford Caldecott

Stratford Caldecott has increasingly become one of my favourite authors. I have, to date, read his The Power of the Ring, Beauty for Truth’s Sake, and The Radiance of Being. I am immensely saddened that I had not met him before he went further on his pilgrimage to the Patria than I can currently follow. Still, I have the comfort of his words and his book All Things Made New is just that, a comfort.

The book begins with a spiritual commentary on the book of Revelation, noting the important theological, symbolical, and even numerological meanings in the text. From there it moves to a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed, the Rosary, and the Stations of the Cross. In a way, the whole book is concerned with the Rosary, which is to say that it is concerned with the life of Christ as partially mediated through the eyes of His mother.

The Major Works of Anselm of Canterbury: The Monologion

While I will read the whole book, I am currently working my way through the Monologion of Anselm. It is an attempt to come at some knowledge of God by way of reason alone. I decided to read this book because my background in Anselm is rather weak. I have read about his famous “ontological argument” for God’s existence: namely, that God is that-than-which-no-greater-thing-can-be-thought. This argument has often been dismissed, but I hope to come to a better understanding of it. I have also read Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo or Why God Became Man, which I found both interesting and insightful. Reading this book is my chance to go deeper into the good doctor’s writings.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fireby J. K. Rowling

Every year I re-read the entire Harry Potter Series. I have done so since the seventh book came out (actually, I re-read the entire series as soon as I had finished reading the seventh book for the first time). Goblet of Fire is not, perhaps, my favourite book. It can often get bogged down with all the side stories: Hermione and Rita Skeeter; Hermione, Ron, and Krum; Harry and Cho; Fred, George, and Ludo Bagman (and the goblins); Hagrid the Half-Giant; S.P.E.W.; Crouch and Winky and Crouch; etc. However, what is perhaps stranger, is how necessary each of these side stories is to get us to the end. While the film attempted to streamline the story, it failed (rather miserable, in my opinion). Each one seems almost necessary to get us into the graveyard with Harry. Still, the book often seems overfull, perhaps because it is, I believe, the second longest of the series.

The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis

The Chronicles of Narnia are another septology I read every year. While this reading technically belongs to 2014, I’ve had to stretch it out as I’ve been reading the book aloud to my twin sons. Every night, we put them in pyjamas, I sing them a lullaby (The Road Goes Ever On and On by J. R. R. Tolkien), put them in their cribs, turn out the lights, except for a book light, and read to them. Something I’ve noticed in reading them aloud this year are the parts that choke me up. Sometimes reading can be difficult because I’m trying to fight back tears and do voices. Another interesting aspect of reading them this year is that I’ve been reading them in the order in which they were written. This means I’m only on the second to last book with The Magician’s Nephew still to go. It makes it different since I’m reading references to The Magician’s Nephew without having read it yet.

Well, that’s all the books I’m currently reading and a little about them. What are you reading?